


Narutostuck: No Child Left Behind

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: Narutostuck [7]
Category: Homestuck, Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Human/Troll Society, Birthday, Childhood Trauma, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dark, Dystopia, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 22:06:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6211990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The testing happens on Dave's birthday. In the first hour past dawn, soldiers knock on the doors of every kid who's turned six since the last round of tests, five months ago. Rose tries to persuade Dave's escort to take her too, but no dice. The list is the law, and he was born seven minutes <em>before</em> midnight while she was born six minutes <em>after</em>. The regime doesn't care about her until the next round.</p><p>Dave waves goodbye to his sister and mom as the soldier leads him away. If he's lucky, he'll see them again tonight. If he's not, well, there's nothing he can do except try to take someone with him when he dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Narutostuck: No Child Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was written on 3/8/16 for [mid-childan-puella-magi](http://mid-childan-puella-magi.tumblr.com), in response to the prompt: _Narutostuck Jade, Aradia, Dave - apprehension?_ Nothing explicit happens on-page, but pre-revolution Narutostuck is a dystopia and its unkindness does not spare children. Consequently, this ficlet got kind of grim. Sorry?

The testing happens on Dave's birthday. In the first hour past dawn, soldiers knock on the doors of every kid who's turned six since the last round of tests, five months ago. Rose tries to persuade Dave's escort to take her too, but no dice. The list is the law, and he was born seven minutes _before_ midnight while she was born six minutes _after_. The regime doesn't care about her until the next round.

Might be two months. Might be two years. Nobody's ever sure when it's coming, just that it'll come. Even living outside Kouin won't save you; everyone winds up on a list in the end.

Dave waves goodbye to his sister and mom as the soldier leads him away. If he's lucky, he'll see them again tonight. If he's not, well, there's nothing he can do except try to take someone with him when he dies.

(He's really glad for the hood on his jacket. It hides his face a little, and if his eyes start to water, he can rub them dry without anyone noticing. Probably, anyway.)

The soldier isn't anybody special, just a brown-blood private maybe sixteen years old, back from her first deployment over the straits. She isn't cruel as they walk; she just doesn't care. She'd have to act like Dave was a person to be cruel.

The soldier ignores his attempts to talk until Dave's words shrivel like dry leaves in his throat. She wraps her hand around his upper arm and pulls him through the village like an untrained dog -- over Execution Bridge, past the Uchuukage's brightly painted compound, around the crater where a rebel assassin tried to kill the Lady of Space last fall and got captured instead, and out into one of the training grounds where a bunch of other kids are already waiting. She says his name to someone at the gate, who makes a mark on a clipboard and waves them through the fence.

The training ground is an open field with a few scattered trees and bushes, the grass gone brown and tired with the onset of winter. The dirt underfoot is soggy from last night's rain, and most of the kids have clustered on the patches of slightly higher ground. Normally a group this big would be really loud, but nobody seems to be interested in talking, let alone starting games or fights.

Dave looks around for anyone he knows, and spots Jade and Aradia sitting in the lower branches of a leafless birch. He meanders toward them, hands in his pockets and glancing around to see if he can find any covered spots near the fence without a guard to keep watch over them. It's not like he really thinks he can escape -- or even wants to, not when Mom's been careful to tell him and Rose about what the investerrogators do to the families of known or suspected rebels -- but it's good to keep in practice, right?

"Hey," he says when he reaches the tree.

"Hi, Dave. Happy birthday," Jade says, in a gray shadow of her usual enthusiasm. Her hair is a mess and her jacket is blue and white instead of green and black, which mean's it actually belongs to John. She has her hands stuffed into the wide front pouch like she wants to hug herself without being too obvious.

Dave trips over the weird sensation of having no words to throw into the awkward silence that follows Jade's greeting. He bites his lip, turns to face Aradia and hopes that something coherent comes out when he opens his mouth.

"Uh. Hey to you too, Aradia. We haven't seen you in a while. I think Rose wanted to talk to you about drawing a treasure map or something?"

Aradia looks weird without her lusus bouncing around her feet, but then, she's not going to have a lusus after today. Either she'll be in a training barracks, or she'll be gone. (Dave doesn't know what happens to the lusii. The official line is they get driven back into the wild to find new wigglers to adopt, but Mom says the official line is usually bullshit. He doesn't think he really wants to know the truth.)

"Oh, yeah, I remember that. We were going to play gamblignants, but I got distracted by other stuff," Aradia says. She looks past Dave, eyes narrowed against the nearly horizontal rays of the winter sun. "Where is Rose? Did they bring you two separately?"

Dave shrugs, tries to pretend they're not all off-balance. "Nah, they didn't bring her at all. Her birthday's not till tomorrow, so." It feels weird to be doing anything important without his twin at his side. He's not sure if he should feel glad that she's safe for a little longer, or worried about what she might do at her own testing without him there to distract her.

Jade probably feels the same way about John. And trolls don't have family like humans do, but that doesn't mean Aradia can't worry about the rest of their friends.

"Do you know how they do the testing, or what they're looking for?" Jade asks after another attack of awkward silence that Dave doesn't know how to fill. "Since your mom works for intelligence and stuff?"

Dave shrugs again. "I think it's for, uh, chakra affinities? For the breeding lists, and also so if anyone with special skills wants an apprentice, they know who can handle the lessons and who'd just get their head exploded by accident. Or on purpose. Even if I don't know _why_ anyone'd want to explode their head on purpose -- somebody else's head, sure, but exploding your own is just weird and if you're going for an exploding body part assassination it's simpler to use your hand or something you can cut off and maybe survive, right?"

He should ask Dirk about that sometime. Dirk's pretty good with explosions.

"But anyway," Dave continues, "I don't know how they figure out who's affinitied with what elements. Or why some people fail or disapp-- I mean, except for failing because you can't shape chakra, because obviously you can't be a soldier if you can't soldj, although I don't know if that should technically count as failing because if everyone was a soldier we wouldn't have anyone to grow food and then we'd all starve and that would be the dumbest way to lose a war I've ever heard of. We'd have to go beg for scraps in the west and they'd look at all our starved skeletons and just laugh themselves to death which means they wouldn't win either, and actually laughing yourself to death at zombie skeletons might be an even stupider way to lose than just starving." And that line of thought grew legs and ran away from him at some point.

At least he has his words back?

Aradia is politely hiding her smile behind one hand. Jade is outright laughing at him. That feels pretty good too.

"Well, the test can't be too complicated, right? Most people our age don't know how to shape chakra yet, and most people pass anyway," Aradia says. "I bet we don't even have to do anything except stand in line."

"You're probably right," Jade agrees. Then her head tilts, like she's trying hard to hear something across the training ground. "Hey, I think they're about ready to start!"

Dave turns his head, and yeah, a bunch of soldiers have marched into the training ground and are organizing the other kids into columns and rows facing a small platform someone's raised from the ground. They should probably head over before someone comes to fetch them.

"We'll be done by noon, I bet," he says. "Why don't you guys come over to our place for lunch and we'll see who can tell Rose the most convincing lie about the test."

"Sure," Jade says. "Bet you a caegar I win."

"You're a terrible liar; I'll take that bet," Aradia replies as she leaps down from her branch.

Dave follows his friends toward the testing platform and lets himself believe that everything will be okay. They won't fail and be exiled to the conscript farms, they won't pass too well and get noticed by anyone important, and most of all they won't disappear. They'll go home. He'll hug Rose and Mom. They'll invite John and Sollux and Tavros and maybe Feferi over for lunch and birthday cake. Everyone will be fine.

(The testing goes alphabetically by surname. Jade and Aradia each wave to him before they vanish behind the testing platform. He doesn't see them again for nearly ten years.)

**Author's Note:**

> And that is the story of how Jade and Aradia got conscripted into Abyss. Dave would have shared their fate if he'd been biologically female. As it is, he was merely listed as high-priority breeding stock… until he joined the rebellion several years later, got captured, and was reclassified as perfect raw material for the kind of science experiment where you don't much care if the subject survives so long as you get useful data from the tests.
> 
> Like I said, pre-revolution Narutostuck _IS_ a dystopia.


End file.
